Autism.Rocks Sells for 10X More Than The .Com Did Last Year & Sedo.sucks

by

Sedo.com  reported today that the domain name Autism.Rocks sold for $100,000 in its weekly report.

The domain name Autism Rocks.com sold last year for $9,500 to the same Buyer.

The buyer paid more than 10X more for the new gTLD Autism.Rocks than he paid for the .com domain AutismRocks.com last year.

I just chatted with the Seller of the domain name, Chris Wilson who is a neighbor in Hollywood Florida  and who registered the domain for normal registration fees.

Mr, Wilson was offered $100,000 as the opening offer; which Mr. Wilson, who operates a non-profit site at werockforaustism.org accepted straight away.

Mr. Wilson is not a domainer, but a fighter for the Autism cause.

Mr. Wilson, the Seller of the domain name told thedomains.com exclusively, that The Buyer and Seller are not happy with Sedo.com, as they charged 15% to act as escrow agent for a transaction that they neither brokered or facilitated nor were involved in other than escrow agent.

The seller asked Sedo to take a portion of the escrow fee and contribute it to Autism.

Sedo declined according to the Seller.

I chatted with Escrow.com and  their basic escrow fee on a $100,000 domain name would be around $900.

So neither the buyer or seller who are both deeply involved in the Autism cause are thrilled about being overcharge $14K for escrow services.

We have called out Sedo in the past for including escrow only translations in their sales report but now that there is a huge charitable cause involved that takes it to a whole different level.

Congrats to Mr. Wilson who might have single handled changed the narrative for the new gTLDs.

As for Sedo it’s not a pretty picture and I have no idea of how you can charge 15% to only act as escrow agent.

Autism a condition which affects 1 in every 88 children

The escrow fees should have been contributed without a doubt.

Shame on Sedo

Congrats to the Seller and Buyer.

 

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. Andrea Paladini says

    15% for the Escrow service only? lol … Damn, that’s a plain rip-off …
    Both seller and buyer are huge fighters for the Autism cause, and Sedo should be ashamed …
    IMHO the high price tag should be seen like a stronger contribution to the Autism cause, not really the intrinsic value of that .rocks domain 🙂
    Anyway, congrats to both buyer & seller!

    • Andrea Paladini says

      P.S.
      A humble suggestion to Chris Wilson and Sanjay Shah (the buyer): next time, if you need only an escrow agent, use Escrow.com, for 100k the fee is only 0.89%, and your transaction is secured by a licensed escrow company. 🙂

  6. todd says

    “Congrats to Mr. Wilson who might have single handled changed the narrative for the new gTLDs.”

    Everyone says “Oh my God this domain sold for 100 grand” when in reality the buyer is a guy who has a autism charity and a son with autism plus a lot of money giving 100 grand to another guy with an autism charity and a son with autism and no money. It was his way of giving a nice donation to a new autism charity because he can afford to. He offered 100 grand as his initial opening offer not because it was worth that much but because he was giving back to a new charity in a subject close to his heart. This was pretty much a donation to a new charity and shouldn’t even count as a gTLD sale.

    • Domain Shame says

      Of course it counts as a sale, reason why you can’t say what you said is you don’t know what that means can use that money for. If that money went to his bank account and didn’t go to the charity thats not a donation. What if he buys a new car what if he adds a deck onto his house still a donation ?

      • todd says

        I get it but in my opinion it’s not a sale. This is one rich guy with a kid that has autism giving to a not so rich guy with a kid that has autism. If this domain was owned by me or you we wouldn’t have received a $100,000 offer but would have received a phone call from his lawyer. It was his way of giving back. Autism isn’t cheap. I know because my daughter has autism and it costs us an extra 70 grand a year in therapy, medicine etc……

        • Domain Shame says

          I am sorry to hear about your daughter. One has to wonder why tbe seller even registered it and $100,000 opening offer is a bit odd.

  7. Billy says

    Whoever actually believes that a .rocks actually sold for $100K should contact me. I have some luxury Florida swampland and a bridge I’d like to sell. The gtlds aren’t even worth the initial reg fee.

    • Domain Shame says

      Why because you say so ? obviously it fucking sold Sedo received $15,000 so obviously it’s sold just another troll. You sure do attract them Mike.

  8. Domain Observer says

    15% for escrow service only? Hard to believe it. They charge 3 %. I am afraid that there was some misunderstanding.

  9. Anticareer says

    It wasn’t just Escrow if he made an offer, but still Sedo should do the right thing instead of grabbing the money for this, but still if the buyer has 100k to donate then he is smart enough to read the rules and see there will be 15% fee and he should just contact domain owner directly. And while it will go in books as a sale this is clearly a donation or goodwill though gTLD registries will spin it to put that lottery ticket in newbies eyes.

    • spencer says

      this wasnt really a sale. More of an escrow transaction. At least,…that was THE INTENT it seems.

  11. RodKnee says

    I think that the new golds are really dumb and I think it’s obvious that the boat will soon be taking on water. Women and children first. That’s all I have to say.

    • BT says

      You’ll rarely see an anti-new gTLD argument more sophisticated than “I think they are really dumb.” It seems like some folks are salty that new and innovative alternatives to .com have arrived…reminds me of a taxi service complaining about Uber and Lyft.

  13. Anunt says

    This is what really happened…
    .rocks gTLD owner basically made a $100k donation to autism.

    The 3 guys sat down and made this deal.

    .rocks gTLD owner, Sanjay(buyer), and Wilson(seller).

    It’s a win-win-win for everybody involved except sedo.

    Autism gets donation.
    .rocks gTLD gets advertising publicity.
    buyer gets domain for free.
    seller gets paid couple thousand, not $100k.

    Everyone wins…that’s what really happened…and sedo knows this inside info so they got pissed and charged the full 15% commission amount…so sedo got paid but got bad publicity.

  16. Michael Berkens says

    Guys

    Just to be clear, although I thought the post was, the seller Chris Wilson was VERY clear that Sedo was NOT involved in this transaction in any way shape or form other than serving as the escrow agent.

    The did not find the buyer, the domain was not listed on Sedo for sale.

    The Seller is not a domainer and didn’t know about escrow.com

    • Andrea Paladini says

      “The Seller is not a domainer and didn’t know about escrow.com”
      Mike, I understand your point, but he should have got informed, as every people do, you don’t need to be a domainer to find out Escrow.com, you just need to make a very quick search on any search engine …
      And in this case we are talking about a 100k transaction, not peanuts, so getting a bit informed is the min you can do to avoid issues or unpleasant surprises. 🙂

  17. DNSal.es says

    Sedo would normally charge 15% if the domain name was listed there. Why would a non-domainer list it at Sedo? If the transaction happened at Sedo, they deserve it. What did the company has commented on the deal?